This print grays their mission like carbide. br Denim and cotton fall from shoulders, br enwrap legs in a fog of fatigue. br br Miles under Grass Valley, they carved roads br & inhaled the breath of blind mules. Went where consumptive br foremen said to go. Fall with them now br br a thousand feet to First Level, depend br on cable, hug a dinner-bucket to your chin, stand br bone-and-muscle close. Smell dynamite br br and manufactured air. Meet my father, there br in a crevice of the mission, hard-hat tipped back, br alongside older men hard with rage and booze. br br Seventeen: He shouldn’t have been hired. North Star br needed backs and shoulders, the will to muck in space br too small to stand in. The camera hires him. The rest br br is a sullen day crew. Ghostly battalion: two hundred br acolytes of labor. Gold was the Company br they kept in business. They kept women in whorehouses. br br Gold was a way to box with poverty. And lose. br The camera situates faces between Wars, miners br wary between missions, shadows in history’s tunnel. br br A caption floats: EMPIRE STAR MINES CO. LTD. FRED br W. NOBS, GENERAL MGR M.E. NEWLOVE SUPT. br GRASS VALLEY CALIF. JUNE 20 1938 DAY SHIFT br br Get to work: They enter the cage of their lives, dropp into br work’s planet, excavate the 20th of June. Their light br stays in that company pose. They went down, set charges, br br mucked detritus of Blast, loaded cars, stayed alive. br They went down into their granite time. br They mined their pulses in quartz veins.